Pearson’s twelve

Pearson’s twelve are the list most often mislabelled “Jung’s twelve archetypes”. They date from Awakening the Heroes Within (1991), which doubled the six of 1986. Jung never fixed a number and never proposed these; the publisher of the related instrument itself dates the twelve to Pearson. The 1991 names are listed above, and the twelfth is the Fool. The instrument built on the list, the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator (with Hugh Marr; manual 2003; published by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type and now hosted by StoryWell), uses Jester for the book’s Fool, and its 2020 revision renamed three more, in the publisher’s words to make all twelve equally positive: Innocent became Idealist, Orphan became Realist and Destroyer became Revolutionary. The author’s site records each former name. The publisher describes the instrument as validated by extensive psychometric testing; no independent peer-reviewed study of its reliability or validity has been located, so this site does not present it as validated. The same twelve were adapted, with five names changed, for brands by Mark and Pearson in 2001, which is the version most marketing sites reproduce as Jung’s.

Sources

• Pearson, C. S. (1991). Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-250678-8.
• Pearson, C. S. (2020, 6 May). PMAI re-release letter: three archetype names adjusted. https://www.carolspearson.com/wp-imort-2/pmai-re-release
• Pearson, C. S. Archetype pages recording the former PMAI names (Realist, Idealist, Revolutionary). https://carolspearson.com/archetype-pages/orphan-archetype
• StoryWell. The roots of the Pearson-Marr archetypes. https://www.storywell.com/articles/roots-of-pearson-marr-archetypes.htm
• USPTO registrations: PEARSON-MARR ARCHETYPE INDICATOR, Reg. No. 3034746 (2005); PMAI, Reg. No. 3359380 (2007). https://trademarks.justia.com/771/67/pmai-77167717.html